Teen Heros ....good idea or bad idea?

[Sentry]

With the sudden amount of teen titles in the past year or so, and them having settled a bit do you think they are a good idea or bad?

There is now runaways, young averngers etc along with the number of teen characters in the x-books. (even ultimate spider-man)

Do you think teen characters have their place? and if so do you think it is right to have them run roit in the marvel universe?

Personally , i like the titles and think both of young averngers and runaways are handled well. My issue and problem lies within the walls of the x-mansion. we all know that prof x is a joke, but surley he stoops to his lowest when using teen agers to fight his battles. lets not forget the original x-men were all teen heros originally.

So what are your views on them, do you identifty with them? will they last?

[mattbib]

Right or not it makes for good storytelling, especially when they're treated realistically (or at least as realistically as a superhero comic can get) as opposed to the naive teen sidekicks of the '60s.

I think both New Avengers and Runaways work because they're NOT encouraged or sanctioned by any adult teams; at least not yet. I think both will work best if they are never officially tied to an establish team other than in name/relation.

As for New X-Men, so far they haven't really been treated as teams of superheroes. I think most of their adventures have been circumstantial or without the X-Men's supervision. I agree, though, that once Xavier starts sending teens out on missions things are going wrong (despite my love for the old titles; it's just a different world today). That's one of the reasons why I always hated Jubilee's presence in the '90s. And even Gen-X got out of hand.

[Crash-Man]

Teen heroes are a great idea.

The only problem I had with the Young Avengers membership is Kate Bishop just...picking up a bow and becoming a superhero. Her music camp archery story isn't convincing to me at all. It's tough to accept when someone becomes a superhero without powers or years of specialised practise. Reminds me of the Defenders in the current Ultimates run.

Runaways is a terrific book.

Generation X was one of those comics that started out perfectly, was full of so much potential...and then just died. I don't understand why. Between handing art chores to Grummet and sending the team to Fairyland, it's almost as if Marvel wanted to kill the book.

[darkhawk76]

I can't forgive the heinous pointless death of Synch

the fact it was dealt with in a flashback annoyed me even more. It was like Ellis (I think) decided boring character I'll kill him off, but I won't bother showing you how just yet (also why did M & Synch suddenly become a couple, just for him to die)

re: teen heroes, they're okay if done correctly (ie Stan Lee's Spider-Man). Teen versions of existing characters is a bit too DC for Marvel, though I do like Young Avengers

[Mr. Nobody]

I personally like reading about lots of different kinds of characters from lots of different backgrounds and age groups. Marvel’s gotten a bit too youth fixated though but that’s probably just a product of our overall culture. Maybe it’s just me, but the idea that kids aren’t interested in identifying with anything outside their general frame of experience is complete nonsense. By the time I bought my first Spider-Man comic he’d already been married a few years, the first issue of Fantastic Four I’d read (270 or thereabouts) had Reed celebrating his fortieth birthday, I couldn’t say it ever occurred to me these things should be deterrents to my enjoyment of the characters. Probably the most interesting version of Batman to me, is the ass-kicking geezer Bruce Wayne from Batman Beyond, who’s never really changed or given up even his body won’t let him be Batman anymore.

I’m not quite a teenager anymore but I was during the Bob Harris’s reign over marvel, a few years back, a man who went so far with his youth fixation to forbid marvel characters from having beards, because he thought that would make them too unidentifiable to marvel readers. Beyond the distaste this left for its failed blatant attempt at sucking up, seeing all these characters, many of whom had long elaborate histories that played into their characters suddenly being written and drawn as teenagers was a bit too much to swallow. If anything the more they tried to make their characters like me the more apparent the differences became, and really just sort of reminded me of how boring my life was in comparison.

As to the teen heroes vs. grown up heroes argument, the thing is when I’m presented with an underaged hero, the automatic expectation is that a lot their story is going to deal with growing up. While foolish erratic behavior and the making of mistakes is expected of the young hero, it just gets sort of irritating and sad if were not able to see any real growth come out of it. Ultimate Spider-Man started off great, for example, but I pretty much lost interest as soon it became obvious he was going to stay fifteen forever. I’ve always leaned more towards grown up heroes however. The teenager’s life tends to revolve around a lot of crap I’m glad I don’t have to deal with, like meeting curfews, adults not taking them seriously, the rigid hierarchy of high school, whining about boy/girl problems, things even they won’t care about anymore in a couple of years. Adults on the other hand, don’t have to do what anybody tells them. They can do all the cool things we looked forward to as kids, like drive cars or carry guns and buy beer. They have more history, which provides more depth and opens up more story possibilities.

Okay, which of these is a million times better than the other. Original Fantastic Four, where they're all adults, have complex relationships established based on years of mutual love/hate, they get to explore the universe with impunity and build giant potentially explosives contraptions right in the middle of a highly populated area without anyone complaining, or Ultimate Fantastic Four, where they're all kids living in some kind of weird institution, and we have to listen to them being scolded by Sue Richards dad, or whoever else runs that place, everytime they want to do something.

[Sentry]

Right or not it makes for good storytelling, especially when they're treated realistically (or at least as realistically as a superhero comic can get) as opposed to the naive teen sidekicks of the '60s.

I think both New Avengers and Runaways work because they're NOT encouraged or sanctioned by any adult teams; at least not yet. I think both will work best if they are never officially tied to an establish team other than in name/relation.


this is exactly what i ment, these two books work as they are not ment to be running around saving the earth, but they do. This is exactly what would happen in the real world. They would be discoraged but do it anyway, i know i would.

This is why we look back at characters like robin/bucky/toro etc in a nagative light, because they were running around with the big boys, just generally getting into trouble and making life more complicated.

[Goldenbane]

I like teen heroes, don't get me wrong...but I just prefer adult heroes more. Teen heroes have their place, no doubt about it, there's great and interesting stories out there to be told...but the problem is finding good talent to tell those stories.

In my opinion, Marvel has completely lost sight of kids and comics. When I was a kid and read a comic...I didn't want to see Captain America over weight, being dumped by girls, dealing with wearing glasses, and being yelled at by his parents for having low grades on his report card...that was MY life. I wanted to see Cap kick the snot out of Red Skull. Protect Americans and the American way of life. Have the girls oohing and aahing over his every move. Being big and strong and muscular and cool! Doing stuff I CAN'T do. I wanted to lose myself in the character and maybe...as I read...pretend I WAS Captain America.

Cap wasn't a boring bland super perfect golden age character when I read him. This was silver age to 90's Captain America. He had his doubts...his problems with life, just like anyone else had. But Cap had a confidence...or at least...he had an idea about how to fix those problems...and as I read, I could see just what he would do.

Spidey was the same way, but while Cap might have had doubts about saving his super secret spy girlfriend from Red Skull's robot...Spider-man might be worrying about getting to Aunt May's birthday party on time. Spider-man had more down to Earth problems...but like Cap, we could see how those problems would play out in his life and how he could deal with them.

The problem I have with Marvel trying to make their characters "identifiable" with kids...and therefore have them behave like kids...or become kids...is that they never needed to do this before. Marvel never forced Spider-man to behave like a kid in the 80's...when I was a kid...so that I could identify with him. The stories and history and getting lost in the character did that already! We don't need Spider-man being a Goku fan and playing X-box all day...we need him doing what he always does, and that's telling great stories.

[protege]

I personally like reading about lots of different kinds of characters from lots of different backgrounds and age groups. Marvel’s gotten a bit too youth fixated though but that’s probably just a product of our overall culture. Maybe it’s just me, but the idea that kids aren’t interested in identifying with anything outside their general frame of experience is complete nonsense. By the time I bought my first Spider-Man comic he’d already been married a few years, the first issue of Fantastic Four I’d read (270 or thereabouts) had Reed celebrating his fortieth birthday, I couldn’t say it ever occurred to me these things should be deterrents to my enjoyment of the characters. Probably the most interesting version of Batman to me, is the ass-kicking geezer Bruce Wayne from Batman Beyond, who’s never really changed or given up even his body won’t let him be Batman anymore.

I’m not quite a teenager anymore but I was during the Bob Harris’s reign over marvel, a few years back, a man who went so far with his youth fixation to forbid marvel characters from having beards, because he thought that would make them too unidentifiable to marvel readers. Beyond the distaste this left for its failed blatant attempt at sucking up, seeing all these characters, many of whom had long elaborate histories that played into their characters suddenly being written and drawn as teenagers was a bit too much to swallow. If anything the more they tried to make their characters like me the more apparent the differences became, and really just sort of reminded me of how boring my life was in comparison.

As to the teen heroes vs. grown up heroes argument, the thing is when I’m presented with an underaged hero, the automatic expectation is that a lot their story is going to deal with growing up. While foolish erratic behavior and the making of mistakes is expected of the young hero, it just gets sort of irritating and sad if were not able to see any real growth come out of it. Ultimate Spider-Man started off great, for example, but I pretty much lost interest as soon it became obvious he was going to stay fifteen forever. I’ve always leaned more towards grown up heroes however. The teenager’s life tends to revolve around a lot of crap I’m glad I don’t have to deal with, like meeting curfews, adults not taking them seriously, the rigid hierarchy of high school, whining about boy/girl problems, things even they won’t care about anymore in a couple of years. Adults on the other hand, don’t have to do what anybody tells them. They can do all the cool things we looked forward to as kids, like drive cars or carry guns and buy beer. They have more history, which provides more depth and opens up more story possibilities.

Okay, which of these is a million times better than the other. Original Fantastic Four, where they're all adults, have complex relationships established based on years of mutual love/hate, they get to explore the universe with impunity and build giant potentially explosives contraptions right in the middle of a highly populated area without anyone complaining, or Ultimate Fantastic Four, where they're all kids living in some kind of weird institution, and we have to listen to them being scolded by Sue Richards dad, or whoever else runs that place, everytime they want to do something.
Just wanted to ask where you got your icon from?

[Mr. Nobody]

Just wanted to ask where you got your icon from?

What, cowboy Sean Connery? pretty cool, no? Its one of the default icons offered up by cbr under the "edit avatar" function of the user menu.

If somebody else was using it already i wasn't aware of it. So i didn't rip it off if thats what you were thinking.

If you meant what film did Sean Connery play a cowboy in? I was actually wondering that myself.

[protege]

No, and besides, i thought that was from the league of Extrordinary gentlemen.